Wilderness Watch is opposing a project to build a barrier, using motorized equipment, within the Sids Mountain Wilderness in Utah. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has failed, for 20 years, to prevent ATVs from illegally entering the Wilderness from an ATV trail in Cane Wash, south of the wilderness boundary. BLM is now proposing to construct a line of side-by-side boulders “neatly and strategically placed” inside the Wilderness, with a cable running through. 

BLM would degrade the Wilderness with this barrier and the use of motorized equipment, while essentially allowing illegal motorized use to continue—since the barrier is within the Wilderness, it won’t prevent ATV access in the part of the Wilderness in front of the barrier. BLM’s proposal also fails in that it does not intend to indicate the wilderness boundary, which will lead people to assume the boundary is at the barrier, rather than before it.

Trying to solve illegal motorized use by using heavy motorized equipment and constructing a large barrier is the wrong approach in Wilderness. We suggested that BLM needs to consider alternatives that would end ATV trespass and protect the Wilderness from further degradation. This includes closing off all ATV use in Cane Wash and perhaps all of the side routes that get down there from the east and west. BLM could also enforce the law by ticketing ATV trespass in the Sids Mountain Wilderness.

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Photo: AnnDee Mead, BLM via Flickr